Having spent 15 years in journalism and public relations, Nessa O’Mahony was one of the first writers in Ireland to complete a PhD in Creative and Critical Writing in 2007. She has published two collections of poems, Bar Talk (iTaLicS Press, 1999) and Trapping a Ghost (Bluechrome, 2005). Her verse novel In Sight of Home was published by Salmon in 2009.

She was winner of the National Woman’s Poetry Competition in 1997 and short-listed for the Hennessy and Kavanagh Awards in 1998. She was a recipient of an Arts Council of Ireland literature bursary in 2005 and an artists’ bursary from South Dublin County Council in 2007. She was artist in residence at the John Hume Institute for Global Irish Studies in University College Dublin in 2008-2009. She teaches creative writing with the Open University and is a regular facilitator of creative writing workshops in Ireland and the UK.